There's Lots To Do At The Bronx Zoo

World-class Exhibits Are Featured At Park

NEW YORK — My palms were sweating, my heart thumped. It was your basic fear reaction.

I was standing outside the Reptile House at the Bronx Zoo.

''OK, everybody, line up. Hold hands, because it's dark in here,'' a field-trip leader explained to a nearby group of preschoolers. They were fearless, giddy with excitement and anticipation.

I followed them in, shamed by the fearlessness of people half my height. Besides, there is safety in numbers.

It was dark in there and scary. Ideal for kids.

They saw Samantha first.

''Coooooool,'' one boy shouted, grabbing the kid next to him.

''It's sooooo biiiggg,'' a girl squeaked, pressing her face against the glass that separates us from the largest snake in captivity in the United States.

Samantha is a nice name for such a creepy creature. She is a 22-foot boa constrictor. She once lived in a vacant boxcar, where she dined on live 50-pound pigs while awaiting a permit to enter the United States. She still eats pigs once a month.

Samantha typifies why the Bronx Zoo is so memorable and fun. It is home to about 4,000 animals, among them some of the biggest, tallest, fiercest, fastest, scariest, prettiest and cutest in the world.

Looking for cute? Look for the gorillas. They are the perfect antidote to the Reptile House.

When people squeal at the Monkey House, it's because the newborn gorilla just kissed his mom or because the baby gorillas are wrestling with each other.

''Look honey, he walks like you,'' one woman teased her companion as she pointed out Tim, father of four baby gorillas.

Tim and family are a big draw for the zoo, which is visited by about 2 million people a year.

The size of the zoo is a plus for the animals - even the elephants, giraffes and rhinos have outdoor areas to romp around in - but it also means that it is nearly impossible to see everything in one day.

However, the zoo is well organized and easy to get around, either on foot or on the zoo shuttle. Because the zoo is nearly a century old, the grounds are very wooded, and a canopy of trees shields most of the walks, so it's pleasant even in the summer.

In addition to many outdoor exhibits, there is the Aquatic Bird House, the World of Birds, the Mouse House and the World of Darkness (bats, naked mole rats, owl monkeys and leopard cats).

For a bird's-eye view of part of the park, there's the Skyfari, a five-minute gondolalike ride.

Or try the Bengali Express, a 20-minute monorail ride through the Wild Asia portion of the park. It is elevated about 15 feet and is covered. You get great photo opportunities on this tour and interesting commentary from the guide.

During a recent trip, the monorail passed over a roaring waterfall (the Bronx River) while our guide told us we were no longer in the Bronx. On view were such animals as red pandas, an Indian rhinoceros and her baby, and Siberian tigers.

Some animals stare at the monorail intently, making some visitors wonder who is on display. The baby rhino hid with his mother in the back of his exhibit. At 8 1/2 months old, he weighs 800 pounds; he weighed 120 pounds at birth.

Adjacent to the Wild Asia section is JungleWorld. Inside, it's more than the humid climate that takes your breath away.

In essence, the 13-year-old exhibit transports visitors to an Indonesian scrub forest, a mangrove forest and a southeast Asian rain forest. It is widely regarded as one of the best zoo exhibits in the United States, if not the world.

Visitors travel through the exhibit on a wooden walkway similar to the rope bridges seen in adventure movies. The walkway goes beneath cascading waterfalls, past swamps where the fog sometimes lifts to reveal gharials, members of the crocodile family.

''Is that real?'' a woman practically shouted as she charged up a set of stairs away from a hollowed-out tree. She and a friend determined that the python inside the tree was indeed real. Because of the shadows, it was difficult to see the thick pane of glass protecting walkers from the snake.

Along the JungleWorld journey, a visitor might be brushed by hanging vines, by flying birds or by various small furry creatures that inhabit the exhibit.

As with many of the Bronx Zoo's exhibits, there is a strong educational component to JungleWorld, with particular emphasis on the dangers of destroying the rain forests.

Outside the exit, there is a plaque with a digital readout saying: ''When JungleWorld opened on June 21, 1985, the worldwide acreage of tropical forests was 2,215,384,320. Each minute, 100 more acres are cut and burned. Remaining at this moment are . . .'' The readout went from 791,719,147 to 791,719,072 in less than a minute and continued to decline as visitors who had read it walked away.